Amazon hands arrive with paperwork to unionize at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, October 25, 2021.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
A federal labor instrumentality on Wednesday certified an independent union’s landmark victory at Amazon‘s Staten Island warehouse and threw out a litany of dislikes filed by the e-retailer.
In April, a majority of the roughly 8,300 workers at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, voted to enter the Amazon Labor Union, becoming the company’s first unionized facility in the U.S. Amazon sought to overturn the results of the choice, alleging the National Labor Relations Board office that oversaw the election interfered in the union drive. Amazon also sought that the ALU intimidated workers to vote in their favor.
In a filing Wednesday, Cornele Overstreet, a director of the NLRB’s Phoenix-based section, said he agreed with a federal labor official’s prior ruling that all of Amazon’s objections should be spurned.
Under U.S. labor law, employers are obligated to begin negotiating in good faith with a union after it wins an nomination and the results are certified. But the process can be beset with delays, as the employer may seek to avoid signing a first contract and both exponents hammer out the details of an agreement. According to an analysis by Bloomberg Law, it takes on average 465 days for collective bargaining settlements to be signed between employers and their newly unionized workers.
Amazon can also contest the ruling to the NLRB’s meals in Washington. Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement that the company intends to appeal the results.
“As we’ve believed since the beginning, we don’t believe this election process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team necessitates,” Nantel said.
Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit late last year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy held there were “a lot of irregularities” in the union drive, and that the legal process is “far from over.”
“I think that it’s active to work its way through the NLRB,” Jassy said. “It’s probably unlikely the NLRB is going to rule against itself, and that has a verifiable chance to end up in federal court.”
ALU interim President Chris Smalls wrote in a tweet that the union “beat Amazon benign and square,” and called upon Jassy to “come to the table” to sign a contract.
The ALU has struggled to replicate its success after craftsmen voted to join the union at JFK8. Workers at a nearby facility on Staten Island rejected unionization in May, and the ALU lost an election at an Albany manufactures in October.
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